2. Shauni points out that a lot of people provide stat weights that are generated off a BiS set of gear. At AskMrRobot, we wrote a program that interfaces with SimC: it runs through all sorts of gear levels with various stat weights until it converges on a stable set of weights. We then evaluate those weights to make sure they make sense. And in the case of Affliction locks, we decided Mastery is > Haste because of the point made above.

Please disregard my glyphs, I know what glyphs to use but during the raid last night I had a quick respec to affli and thus didn't get to apply the right glyphs.. Though those glyphs shouldn't account for a 20k dps increase? ^^ I might argue though, that the glyph of soulswap would've increased my dps by a fair amount.

So should I take this as I should go and reforge around for mastery instead? Would be awesome to hit the 60-70k dps that others are doing.. Please feel free to comment all around, not a veteran lock here so I need the help I can get.

Also, it was mentioned to enchant something else than windsong, what to enchant instead then?

I can't help you with this fancy min-max business, because I am new to lock myself, and just recently discovered that secondary stats will be better when I reach a certain ammount of haste (Means mastery gems > int gems).

I know however, for Affliction the most important thing, which I find is left out alot of places.
Pandemic/Haunt usage:
You have to be able to channel MG for the entire duration of Haunt, to benefit most of it. That means, that reapply dots during Haunt is a dps loss. - (Ofc 100% dot uptime is crucial and required, but to waste Haunt duration is a dps loss).
A great way how to do this, is by reapplying dots when they get below 50% of the duration, and then use Haunt and spam MG. This means your safe from dots falling off, etc (Remember, 50% of the base duration, so you can't reapply a dot on 50% of the alrdy pandemic duration).

Another thing is the opener. If we don't look at Doomguard, as my guild tend to blow Time Warp during execute phase,
You open with Dark Soul->SS-SB->Haunt->MG-MG (Remember to reapply dots in the end/when they are about to run out during Dark Soul, for increase win). Try to squeeze as many haunts out during Dark Soul as possible (Both in opener and in general).
Pooling shards is also very good, if you know procs is coming up, or a special phase is coming up, or Dark Soul. You should be able to do atleast 2 Haunts pr Dark Soul.

Also remember, Demonic Gateway and Teleport is your best friends. These abilities, will if you know the fight well, let you minimize movement.

I often tend to have a spot for my portal planned, so I actually don't have to "run" the first time I am hit by something. I just port, and keep on. (For feng for instance, I have my portal at our meetup spot for Earthquake).

This last thing is not fact based, merely something I have a "feeling" is right.
GoSup is a dps loss to use, however if your restricted by movement alot, it could be a dps gain (As the pet will hit the boss with nearly 100% uptime, and only scales well if your allowed to MG.

The first 6 fights I was experimenting with being at hit-cap, while the last two fights (which I did considerably more damage on) was under hit cap and stacking haste/mastery.

Also there's a significant difference between affliction simming great and it's damage output in raids or on more than one target. Affliction is great at sustained multi-dotting where there's ample time to regen shards via drain-soul (last boss in there is a GREAT example of abusing drain soul for 4 shard regen), but on quick adds or fights where there is a decent amount of AoE affliction will fall behind other specs.

Doing so will undoubtedly increase your DPS. The important part of it is though that it comes at a price of missing casts and having more of a seesaw effect in your numbers from fight to fight (meaning you'll be high one fight, and low the next). If you are comfortable with that idea, then do it. Or if you feel like trying this, try it. Worst you can do is waste some gold on reforging (and maybe gemming). Although you might get flack from your raid leader or mates about not being reliable in your DPS too.

TL;DR Going below hitcao is not a free meal, there is a price. Try it if you want, but be aware of the (hidden) costs.

On the first boss in Mosu'Gun I was sitting around 68K on the kill but the burn phase as long as we had two DPS down.

Yesterday we killed Galleon and (with only SB:SoC on the adds, no consistent AoE) I was able to hover around 77K. My item level is 473 already. I got lucky with some drops. However, Galleon dropped the same f****** helmet he dropped the first time I killed him. At least I can get a Sha Crystal, I guess...

The first 6 fights I was experimenting with being at hit-cap, while the last two fights (which I did considerably more damage on) was under hit cap and stacking haste/mastery.

Also there's a significant difference between affliction simming great and it's damage output in raids or on more than one target. Affliction is great at sustained multi-dotting where there's ample time to regen shards via drain-soul (last boss in there is a GREAT example of abusing drain soul for 4 shard regen), but on quick adds or fights where there is a decent amount of AoE affliction will fall behind other specs.

Around 7%. I'm forced to use the engineering trinket with 1200 hit on it because I cannot get the trinket to drop from Gate of the Setting Sun.

To be honest even at 7% hit I didn't feel that it was a big loss when something missed. Fairly frequently a corruption or a UA would miss when applying dots with soulburn->soulswap and occasionally a haunt would miss. The damage I gained from stacking haste and mastery vastly out-weighed the delayed damage on those casts that missed.

If you want to go for hit-cap I'd say it's largely personal preference. People will always continue to say that you should always go for hit-cap as you may lose important damage at the wrong time, but in my opinion the higher average DPS massively outweighs the potential situations where your missed caused a kill to be a wipe. I'm of the opinion that if your haunt missing caused you to wipe you probably should've deserved to wipe to begin with.

I'd advise people to go at least down to 12% hit and further if they feel comfortable with the extra attention you have to put in your rotation when anything can miss at any time.

That's exactly why most raid leaders demand hit cap, because reliable damage is more important than cheesing the DPS meters.

Where is this idea that not hit-capping is cheesing the dps meters coming from? I've heard it multiple times from multiple people and I still don't understand it.

Sacrificing hit for haste and mastery gives you more DPS. It is possible (but EXTREMELY unlikely) that RNG will be so against you that your miss alone caused the wipe, but it is MUCH more likely that the opposite will be true and your increased average damage will help create a kill.

In all of the simulations I've ever done I've never seen the low-end of the values simcraft reports be more than 2k under the average.

After playing a bit with simcraft, hit to mastery conversion seems to be less than one percent damage increase.
Did I make any mistake there? If no, I'd rather take hit for convenience.

Sounds about right. I simmed Brusalk's current armory with an Affliction action list (yes, I realize he is in Destro and probably Destro forges) and got 61709. I reforged his gear to 14.52% hit (and a bunch more haste, which is why it doesn't agree with my napkin math to follow) and got 61448 DPS. Doubtful that that 250 DPS is worth the mental effort (and destroying your rhythm) to account for spell misses. And the math is roughly around that area when you napkin it - the 2nd sim has ~2500 more hit. The difference between Hit and Haste/Mastery at that point is 1.52-1.16 for scaling with his gear, or .36 DPS per point. That equates to 900 DPS, or 1.45% of his DPS.

Edit: Put it this way: the upperbound of your average gain is 4%. This is if Haste/Mastery is worth .5 DPS per point more than Hit, a high number, and if you rigged your gear to have 0 hit and consequently missed 1 in 6 spells.

Sounds about right. I simmed Brusalk's current armory with an Affliction action list (yes, I realize he is in Destro and probably Destro forges) and got 61709. I reforged his gear to 14.52% hit (and a bunch more haste, which is why it doesn't agree with my napkin math to follow) and got 61448 DPS. Doubtful that that 250 DPS is worth the mental effort (and destroying your rhythm) to account for spell misses. And the math is roughly around that area when you napkin it - the 2nd sim has ~2500 more hit. The difference between Hit and Haste/Mastery at that point is 1.52-1.16 for scaling with his gear, or .36 DPS per point. That equates to 900 DPS, or 1.45% of his DPS.

Edit: Put it this way: the upperbound of your average gain is 4%. This is if Haste/Mastery is worth .5 DPS per point more than Hit, a high number, and if you rigged your gear to have 0 hit and consequently missed 1 in 6 spells.

I wouldn't doubt it.

My main thought process is that hit is no longer the be all, end all stat to go for before all else for gear and reforgings. It is just another stat exactly like haste and mastery in terms of DPS increase. I've been attempting to get people to get out of the mindset that hit is required as affliction. It's not.

It makes me excited to play affliction and a class that doesn't have to go for hit-cap as it opens up many more gearing choices. We no longer have to wonder if a haste/mastery piece is better than that hit/haste piece simply because we aren't sure if we can get hitcap without it. We can just get the haste/mastery piece and figure out how much hit we really want and not need.

Where is this idea that not hit-capping is cheesing the dps meters coming from? I've heard it multiple times from multiple people and I still don't understand it.

Personally I hit-cap, but keep in mind that if you factor out resource costs (soul shards) and response ability to misses, there's just some more RNG similar to critical strikes.

Also, simcraft will not only give you average DPS based on 10,000 (or whatever) iterations, but also the standard deviation of DPS and 95% confidence intervals. In other words, there's a measure of RNG in every sim as well, so if you wish you can take that into account when simming gear/reforges.

That kinda makes me sad.. you were only high on the dmg done on like 2 fights there (downed bosses). I thought that aff was looking like a top dps spec among all classes? Of course, one player doesn't seal the deal, but the other logs I have seen show the same thing.

I imagine that any raid group doing their first raid reset will not be in BiS gear or indeed the best pre-raid gear they can get. To be honest, I don't think I'd give a damn where people are on the DPS until we're a few weeks in.

I'm only at 453 and I'm pushing anywhere between 40 and 60k in dungeons. I have no idea about the raid yet as we're doing that tomorrow, but with Pandemic do remember you have a much more flexible 'rotation'. You can refresh dots when you have procs and you can make the most of your MF casts by doing this as well. I like to refresh my dots close together so I can get out less cancelled MF casts. Due to the shard cost it shouldn't matter about delaying haunt. Ideally, you want to be casting it just after you refresh your dots.

That kinda makes me sad.. you were only high on the dmg done on like 2 fights there (downed bosses). I thought that aff was looking like a top dps spec among all classes? Of course, one player doesn't seal the deal, but the other logs I have seen show the same thing.

From my own experience, affliction seems to be a strong pick for every fight in Mogu'shan Vaults. I didn't find myself at a disadvantage towards other players anywhere. Everyone in the raid had roughly the same level of gear.

Sounds about right. I simmed Brusalk's current armory with an Affliction action list (yes, I realize he is in Destro and probably Destro forges) and got 61709. I reforged his gear to 14.52% hit (and a bunch more haste, which is why it doesn't agree with my napkin math to follow) and got 61448 DPS. Doubtful that that 250 DPS is worth the mental effort (and destroying your rhythm) to account for spell misses. And the math is roughly around that area when you napkin it - the 2nd sim has ~2500 more hit. The difference between Hit and Haste/Mastery at that point is 1.52-1.16 for scaling with his gear, or .36 DPS per point. That equates to 900 DPS, or 1.45% of his DPS.

Thank you, that is a very good explanation. No reason to push exact 15%, but a good stat to have. That's how I see it now.

Originally Posted by Sakpoth

Logs were done same night with same gear, but got separated because WoL went down.

I have pretty much the same numbers on first 4 four bosses, +/- 2k.
Can I ask how is affliction doing on Elegon's orbs? Do you need to save dark soul/trinket/pot to down them reliably?

I have pretty much the same numbers on first 4 four bosses, +/- 2k.
Can I ask how is affliction doing on Elegon's orbs? Do you need to save dark soul/trinket/pot to down them reliably?

It's slightly troublesome because you want instant application of dots on every orb, but you're not refunded shards when using Drain Soul on the orb, so you want to try to use Drain Soul on Elegon in between orbs. 4th orb can get close if you're slow with target switching, but is most of the time fine with dots + haunt + mg (can be done without haunt as well). 5th orb is much closer but doable, however it should be easy with just one cd for it. You don't want to use Haunt on the first 3-4 to save shards and when you do use Haunt I would advise getting as close to the shards spawn as possible to minimize the travel time needed before your dots start ticking harder. I personally stood quite far away on our attempt so that part is more of an after sight of how to reliably get it down.

As long as you're quick with targeting your orb when it spawns you should be able to at least kill the first 5 on your own without cooldowns. We only went for 5, so I'm not sure how hard 6+ might be to kill.